I like the idea, but…

I like the idea of SL. It’s cool. A virtual world with open-ended goals. Building tools are accessible to everyone, and easy to learn. Sure, mesh and sculpties are a little more complex, but they’re doable, even if it takes some skill to get good results. Anyone can mess with it.

I like that there is a huge diversity of people using SL. It’s cool to think that you can randomly bump into all kinds of people. The problem is, in reality, it doesn’t always work out that way.

SL has a lot of people who want to separate RL and SL. They’re on a mission of some focused kind of experience, and that generally means they’re less open to talking to strangers. Others aren’t so much trying to segregate realities, but they’re busy. They own a shop or run a samurai clan or whatever, and they don’t have time for idle chit chat.

What I’m trying to get at is that if my friends from Corona Cay that I’ve known for the past 6 1/2 years aren’t logged in, I find it impossible to get anyone to talk to me. Maybe I’m a social failure, maybe I just don’t know how to find interesting people, but the fact is, SL is pretty freaking boring unless the people who I’ve known since rez day or shortly after aren’t inworld.

I don’t know if that’s a damning indictment on me, or on SL, but it seems like SL kind of sucks for hanging out in just for fun, to be honest. I’ll bet every one of the people on Corona Cay who comes in at a weird time when no one else is in knows exactly what I’m talking about. Am I right? Or am I just being negative again?

Comments

Apart from CC the friendliest places I’ve found tend to be the live music venues – newcomers are almost always welcomed by name at the best venues and it’s easy to get into the conversation. Of course, it generally tends to be about the music playing but it’s still much easier to chat than at a real-world concert! Stick around after the music has finished though and people are generally pretty friendly – I guess having experienced the event together instantly gives you something in common and allows the conversation to continue to other topics. This isn’t true for all events though – sometimes as soon as the performance is over everybody is TP’ing out and suddenly you’re left in a ghost sim!

I have to agree with my two fellow Corona Cayers! It can definitely be a ghost town if I don’t find any of my neighbors in world! All in all… I love my inworld community and neighborhood friends!
Nikki Taylore